My friends are constantly banging on about hifi equipment, turntables, cartridges & styli, speakers and music production. It bores the living crap out of me. All conversations about music quickly turn to sound and production quality instead.

If I lend my friend an album and ask him if he liked it, he invariably replies with something like "well, the bottom end was a bit loose and I don't think the drums were recorded very well".

Yes, but what about the MUSIC?!

I, too, hate those conversations. Especially the guitar ones..."Yeah, but that pickup is a little richer in the low mids but doesn't lose the top end sparkle when you back off the volume a tad...." Gah.

Also, I have a friend who refuses to listen to music without doing this:

"It's good, but not as good as *BLAH BLAH by WHATSHISFACE*, is it?"
"Listen to this! Listen to this! It's better than that one you just said you liked!"
"I don't care what anyone says, *WHATSHISFACE* is the best at this kind of stuff. It's right, innit? Innit? Innit?"

He's a great guy, but it's impossible to have a conversation about music with him that doesn't go down that road within ten seconds...